2 Kings 17:27, commentary and pictures

The command was for one of the priests carried away from Israel to be carried back to dwell among the new settlers in Samaria and teach them the manner of the God of the land. Those settlers were heathen colonists from the provinces of Assyria who over many generations intermarried with the remnant of the ten tribes left in Samaria and Galilee. Some Samaritan ancestors therefore belonged to Israel, while others who became associated with Israel later joined them.

The occasion was calamity following apostasy and sin, in which an idolatrous nation was allowed to overcome Israel. After disasters followed that apostasy the settlers sought reform and asked for teachers of the true religion. The teaching they received clarified their views of God and His requirements, led them to worship according to the Mosaic ritual, and brought them to promise to adopt Jewish faith and customs, so that their worship came to resemble Jewish worship more closely.

Their religion nevertheless remained mixed and became gradually contaminated, combining Judaism with heathenism. They kept reverence for the true God but represented Him by images of wood and stone, claiming the idols were only to remind them of the living God, the Ruler of the universe, while in heart and practice they reverenced graven images and never wholly renounced idolatry. They claimed to be God's people, built a rival temple on Mount Gerizim, refused to acknowledge the temple at Jerusalem as the house of God or to admit the religion of the Jews superior to their own, and thus opposed Jerusalem-centered worship, creating religious division and hostility already present when the Israelites nearby were rebuilding the temple. Even though disasters attended them and their temple was destroyed by their enemies so that they seemed under a curse, they still clung to their traditions and forms of worship.